Gale both guided and interned at Hidden Villa, an educational farm and nature preserve in Los Altos Hills, California.
The children emerge from the school bus, and as we form a giant circle, I feel the usual mixture of fear and eagerness. They have lunch pails, borrowed backpacks, undiminished energy. What am I doing here with them? Why will I devote the next four hours to six children, playing, entertaining and teaching them, but trying to spark the willingness to care as well…
Fear because each group is so different, and the electrical quotient—the feeling of this group—can be so charged by a single individual; and because some days do not go well, are filled with frustration and failure—dozens of time failures mounding in a heap so that the successes cower and melt away in memory. Eagerness because what I am doing, I know, is vitally, essentially important work, some of the most crucial that can be done in the world; and each group is a palette, an arrangement of colors from which a day can be, together, painted harmoniously.
Because it is a farm, the connections are clear and obvious. It is a model of what to do with the land, as well as what not to do. In wilderness and parks, humans have done very little to nothing, appropriately; but such passivity makes the active manipulation of land seem very distant from those places or values that our feelings about them create. We love nature there, pure and unstructured, but it’s hard to see what kind of direct role that mountain scene has in our lives. But farms: here humans and land interface. Here the relationships must be active and maturing. Here the fellow living creatures are penned and docile and pettable, not the abstraction that canyon and coyote become— almost more symbols than reality. Here a person can not simply admire from afar but must engage himself, do something, cultivate the soil, take from it and give back to it. Having a working farm here gives substance to our naggingly abstract concept of human stewardship.
And so the harmony, the respect, the curiosity, the awareness of cycles—all those things that come from the nature experience—are brought home to our stomachs and the soles of our feet, to our sweaters and automobiles. The gap is driven to zero. Yes, dirt did make my lunch; yes, banana slugs are important; yes, the car we rode in added to that smog. A calf like this will die to create my sandwich.
One of HV’s more endearing qualities is its steadfast refusal to tolerate flinching at traditionally taboo substances—namely, feces, rotting garbage, slaughtering, sewers, slugs, and so on. Some have accused me, perhaps rightly, of dwelling on these things overmuch. The compost pile is explored; dried scat is picked apart under the euphemism “used mouse.” Manure is, oddly, a central theme, and decomposition the codeword of the day. Slugs are handled and petted, and the children plainly told that the adorable baby male calf will turn one day into hamburger. Perhaps we dwell on this step, the feces-decomposition-death step because it is underplayed, so little talked about; perhaps we are reacting to its submission and then emphasize it even more. Without it, the circle breaks, the cycles have discontinuities and jagged ends. The fable of a clean, antiseptic world of products from factories is not threatened, is unsoiled. The “dark side” of cycles, the flip side of the coin, must be evident before the whole coin can be seen. Unequivocal frankness about unpleasant realities.
“Let’s kill it,” yelled Leo, and charged after a tiny gray spider with a stick. Whether or not it escaped will never be known, but after it disappeared Leo claimed conquest. “Why did you want to kill it?” I asked in my most patient “let’s understand-this-kid-voice.” “Because they bite people.” There was something I could latch on to: “Oh, very few spiders bite people,” I began before he cut me off. “One bit my mother and she got real sick. She always kills spiders.” That one had me. Correcting a child is one thing; correcting him about his mother is another. Fortunately, by now the rest of the group had forgotten the spider and were admiring a ladybug. “Let’s kill it!” screamed Leo.
At times like these, I wonder what on earth I am doing in a patch of broccoli with six 8-year-olds attempting to “instill an ecological awareness and sense of connectedness to the earth” in children far more enthralled with video games than violets and deer. How, oh Lord, did I come to this neck of land filled with earnest adults, earnestly playing clever, earnest games that persuade children to earnestly feel the beginnings of environmental awareness? Why am I here, and why do I stay, and why can I defend and brag about this program as the best of its kind in the country, spider-hungry boys and all?
We are a motley group, though easily distinguished by sturdy shoes and overflowing daypacks. Professors, students of all majors, ex-students, new students, retired businessmen, housewives, geologists… all filled with zeal. We don’t take this on for the money. We don’t even know if it will be all that fun all the time. We are here out to commitment, out of love, out of necessity, and we stick with it, through the rough days and problem children, because we are impassioned. We have a faith that what we are doing is not just pleasant, or enjoyable, or interesting for ourselves and the children, but absolutely vital to our own and their futures.
It’s not enough to let them have fun or to teach them knowledge. The test is if they really care if they were touched or moved deeply by an experience so that it lives on for them. We are trying to catalyze something beyond knowledge and facts.
These children are not just ignorant. They are worse than ignorant. They believe in a shadowy cradle of technological links, a woven nest beyond their comprehension that keeps them safely suspended off the ground. The ground—the dirt. Yuck! Dirt is mud is gross is dirty, the enemy in Mom’s constant battle armed with Biz, borax and brightness. You mean we have to touch that, to sit on that? Gross! Will we be able to wash our hands? they insist over and over. Unhealthily fastidious, with ribbons in their hair, bright gleaming tennis shoes, and afraid to touch the soil. They are so far from it, from the source of plants and food and oxygen and life. They hesitate to poke a finger in the soft beds when I urge them to be a tiny plant trying to grow.
But how quickly they shed all that, given a chance! How soon they are romping down the hill, sliding in leaves, breathless, giggling, ecstatic, all such worries forgotten as they begin to leave the city and such preoccupation behind them
My maple tree is a canopy of green now, thick and graceful, no more tight-fisted shiny red bunches of leaves. Thrushes, swallows, phoebes, juncos, warblers all sing around me, joining the steady chorus of the creek. The sheep are bellowing again, perhaps for their noonday grain. The weeds are tall now, the miner’s lettuce in full Elizabethan splendor with their colors. Parnsip and germanium also bloom. A curled dock in the fence corner is as tall as I am. Vinca trumpets of purple line the creek bank. A tire, an old 50-gallon drum, and some riding jumps sprawl in the weeds out my door. Across the paddock and garden the line of olive trees is stately and restful gray-green, touched with silver, like the hair of a woman who is not afraid of age.
The grand old oak by the paddock has shaded many a farm tour of enthusiastic toddlers, many a cluster of campers and schoolchildren, many a circle of spent guides. Of its four main trunks, any one could be a sizable tree in its own right. It sprawls welcomingly, offers a lap to a dozen children at a time, stands alone and dignifies and needs no companion. Flats of small blooming flowers and tomatoes line the benches beneath it. A bird can always be heard singing in its branches. The opposite branches seem impossibly far away to belong to the same tree.
A mockingbird flutters out of a buckeye tree, singing earnestly, raising his voice above the others. I have watched the buckeye change and grow with a sense that they deserved my distinct attention. First bald and silver, then tight erect buds, then brilliant five-fingered leaves, leaves that have matured, darkened and curled inward now, bowing out to the new stars of the show: the slender white spikes of flower buds that wait for May to burst into pink-blossomed fragrance and glory. Still, the silver arms and orange-lichened skins are plain beneath all this show, patient and waiting.
Stay long in this environmental education business, and soon the whole world becomes a potential toy, a springboard for a game, a way to learn. Common foxtails are wonderful “tactile-test” instruments. Cranesbill seed pods obligingly curl up on cue. Minks have strong scents to smell; lettuce, chickweed and tomatoes taste good; shepherd’s purses make fine pocketbooks for imaginary mice, and cucumber vines become the leafy equivalents of Spiderman. A weed patch becomes an opportunity, a wonderland to explore.
The garden. Soul of the farm, place of connections. Here it actually happens—the soil is worked by muscles, turned, forked, cared for, and the seeds are placed in it so trustingly. Why should these dried bits transform into green plants? How can they grow and change like that? And the evolving, trustable miracle upon which we so thoroughly yet so unappreciatively depend goes on. The carrots, broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce—all come up, predictably, without noise or fuss. Long, soft, careful beds for these plants, and good rich compost: sheep feces, fava beans, eggshells, orange peels, all going quietly back to the earth. “Shawnie” the cat sniffs between beds, looking for mice. The sheep are now out to pasture—black, mottled, white, noses buried in wet grass. The broccoli, strawberries, poppies and calendulas bloom. Fava beans are now small forests. A healthy crop of nettles grows with the new lettuce. A chickadee squeaks behind me in the old oak tree. The plum tree on the fence that was so breathlessly white in February is a deep green now, wrapped in secretive leaves, thinking about fruit. Dark blue clouds have moved over the valley. Ho, there are pinkish strawberries already glowing on the earth!
Perhaps it is not a tidy garden, but it’s full of surprises, that way: Juicy scallions amidst the beets, some spears of asparagus hiding in the poppies. The chard stems are indisputably scarlet, a color Titian could have put in a tapestry.
The hostel—place of gatherings. Maps on the wall, tough-skinned blue couches, donated wooden chairs, open doors…faded soft books on the shelves, children’s poetry on the wall, humming with memories. “A home full of warm fuzzies,” was how Karen put it at last night’s party. Woodsmoke lingering around. The lambs mewing as they run, the grass up past their knees. This lot is so interesting—one all white, one all black, one definitely gray, three somewhere in between. Moss forests with red spore-bearing filaments curtain the tops of fence posts. There is an autumnal chill in the air. I go for a coat.
Yes, can do. Yes, can build a fence, roof a roof, repair a water line, dig and plant and harvest a garden, teach a child, shelter a traveler. Yes, can do.
The wool is sloughing off the ewes’ necks, dragging on the grass as they graze. The shorn ewes, by contrast, barely seem any larger than their lambs.
What a beloved smell in the haybarn—hot humid July days searching for kittens in Grandpa’s barns. The two calves are asleep, their heads on the heels of their back legs. A nasty-looking four-pronged hay spike hangs from the roof—cobwebs soften all edges.
Maciska sticks her long neck out of her pen to look at me, and two of the cows take a few steps toward me, heads bobbing up and down. The “union shop” of cats are all off sleeping or hunting. Rusted wheels for a wagon are buried in grass. The floor of the dairy is still puddled, the bright pails hanging upside down on wooden pegs, a green sponge on the faucet, and my empty jar by the sink. White, calm, airy, quiet during most of the day and night, with yellow and green doors.
A favorite view—just before crossing the bridge, with a curving bay tree to the left, a light buckeye to the right, the meander in the road matching the meander of the creek heading directly for me, an evergreen and the white house behind the split in the road, the mountains behind them. The lines and curves are beautifully composed: the creek and the movement of leaves in the wind and the changing pattern of shadows on the road, though, make it come alive.
Gloria has done a superb job on the rose garden—it’s exquisite, a whole new corner of HV to admire. The robins seem to love it, too. Pink chestnuts all blooming along the lane. Where the bay tree fell in, still a hole, like the gap where a tooth has been pulled. All too soon, the wisteria is fading on the house. Bunny Creek is much smaller and more “bubbling.” Josephine’s name is still painted in yellow on the small red sign.
On the knoll, yet another perspective—a motorcyclist wails up Moody Road, a woodpecker drums, and the contrast between the wooded hills of HV and the sprawly houses covering the opposite hills is even more painted than usual. Lots of wildflowers—orthocarpum, tomcat clover, poppies, lupines, buttercups, and more—probably thanks to the rain. Mr. Hamilton’s observatories are visible between the foothills. Still lots of birds singing. A hawk glides over the valley. A bird behind is making a noise like a spoon whacking on a tin plate.
In attempting to write the piece I want to pull out of myself, I must realize that I’ve already written one strong piece on a similar subject that was published obscurely, and can easily be, in part, revived. The ending of the “little miracles” children is a good ending and can stand to be used again. Also, the above walk scene, the four teats story, and so forth. Those are good anecdotes that 99.99 percent of the targeted readership will never have heard before—so I can use ‘em without compunction. At the same time, though, my tone will have to change, and I can’t make the mistake of just trying to re-work that piece. My perspective is more mature now and I need to try to show that, and make it all more deep, more complex, less flippant… and written tightly, humorously, and cleanly, with a strong style. My level of writing needs to be Atlantic quality, be infused with that kind of assurance. More brainstorming and recollecting of anecdotes is needed, but also, as I’ll be guiding twice this week and leading two other tours, I can also be very tuned in to my experiences this week, and use them for fresh insight.
Special children. I love special children and will go out of my way to guide them. They are an extra challenge, yet the rewards are so great—and HV is never “so what?” to these kids. (The only attitude it is really difficult to combat.) Ghetto, non-English speaking, learning disability, deaf, mentally gifted—some of my most precious days come from these groups.
I am playing, teaching, disciplining, planning the next three activities, responding to questions, and participating, all at once— the best term for it all is orchestrating. It is strenuous and challenging and requires simultaneous adeptness and several levels of thought.
My L.D. girls were sweet and attentive and indistinguishable from normal bright children. Except for a particular fussiness about washing their hands and sitting on the ground, they were terrific sports. They had never been asked to extend themselves the way I asked them to when I got them up a mountain on a hot day; but once there, they recovered from their exhaustion quickly, and their kvetching faded to nothing. They were especially good at cooperating to get each other over the creeks and down the hills. Over the course of the day, they flowered and asserted themselves: especially little Annelelia during “ranger,” and Delfina with the chickens, and all of them with the cows. The sense of accomplishment and adventure gained, will, with luck, stay with them.
In the midst of some of the day’s vicissitudes, I wonder what all the fuss is about. Why become all aflutter because a child just pulled a handful of weeds to feed a horse? I am trying to teach a feeling, an ethic, a value, in a single field trip, a fleeting experience sandwiched between a typical bus ride and followed by the identical home environment they got their original misconceptions from. The television set and TV dinner await them; “products” line the shelves and they may not be alone again in a wild place, or pet a farm animal, or eat something fresh from a garden again for years. What I am trying to convey took years to develop in me; how many miracles can I expect to catalyze between 9 and 2?
Yet the testimony pours in from teachers, parents, the kids themselves. Children come back as adults, come back to guide, or to bring their children here. Returning children remember exactly what trails they took, what games they played, the names of the animals. One teacher, on a training, later wrote a long letter to the staff explaining how the experience of hugging a tree had transformed all her future experience in the outdoors. Some of it, inarguably, sticks. And as we go for so much, plunge daringly into the most perplexing of problems—the heavy stuff, the decomposition, the necessity of death and defecation—if even a particle of that remains, it’s a step forward.
And if it is impossible to actually teach caring, the simple demonstration of my caring that they can imitate is worth something. An adult they like and look up to feels it’s important to not pick flowers, to be kind to animals, pick up litter, enjoy the woods – that immediately makes it more OK. If it were only a matter of knowledge, of simple facts, then the task would be relatively simple: but when choices about land and environment, choices these children will one day make, become personal and a question of feeling and caring, then that inspiration becomes much more challenging.
Teaching well is largely a matter of taking full advantage of serendipity. So they’re shearing the sheep today: let’s go watch. So the sun comes out after the rain: let’s go hunt for diamonds. So new flowers have appeared along the trail: let’s play a naming game. The dependable banana slugs are great for ten minutes of reverent discussion and handling, and best of all, if the child makes the discovery. I never see the banana slugs, and perhaps that’s for the best. “Mrs. Guide! Look!” They call me back, a call I always heed, regardless of whether I was in the midst of a lesson on decomposition.
Let’s pretend. Imagination is, I’ve come to believe, the most precious scarce resource. Modern children have their imaginations programmed for them and enacted on a video screen in wild colors. But they love to see them. Let’s create a strawberry milkshake or act out photosynthesis; let’s go through a time machine as we enter the wilderness; let’s take this rock and make it your rock, your planet and imagine where you’d live on it. Let’s be chickens, or ants, or coyotes and deer or a bug on a tree.
I am promulgating an attitude, which I suppose makes me biased. A very, very tiny percentage of parents express outrage that we are indoctrinating their little ones in radical environmental propaganda. (“How dare you tell my little Johnny that we ought to recycle…conserve water…stay off rich farmland…not pick flowers, etc.”) Yet while our motives are clear, and we start from clear “biases,” our methods are not the sheer inoculation of ecological principles that could be easily assumed. We ask questions, not give answers, on the whole. If a child thinks we should bulldoze HV in order to create a giant playground (as one of mine once did). I’ll not ostracize him, though I might explore his reasons, and let the older children question him as well. The more prolix my explanations, the less impact I’ll have. So I’ve learned to shut up sometimes. I’ve learned that advantages of a well-aimed laconic question. We are not the cabal of plotting extremists that might be at first suspected. Some of our own principles are inchoate; certainly, it’s all right for children to waffle a bit…We put hard questions to them, after all. Land use questions ain’t easy. The conscious awareness that eating meat requires slaughtering the calf with the big brown eyes is a traumatic experience for many adults, much less for children. There aren’t easy solutions to urban sprawl, overpopulation, pollution, and so forth that we can smoothly stuff down their throats. They can only become aware of the big cycles, the general boundaries, the scope of the problem; and the scope of the solutions to the extent that it might require them to change their lives a little bit. We are not excoriating the American Way. We don’t even want them to stop liking apple pie. Nor are we as punctilious about ecologically correct behavior as we might be; so if the kid brought a Twinkie wrapped in three layers of plastic, what can you do? Go into histrionics?
The acumen of many of these munchkins, though, is astounding. They are quick to hug and love the animals, to tiptoe through the woods, to look carefully at a spider for much longer than most adults would care to. They figure out food webs and discover tiny bugs and plants that I, in my grown-up haste, overlook. We may not be able to reform behavior, but perhaps we can at least ameliorate it or foment a new idea in the pristine mind of a child.
Out on the trails, I am protean, a playground leader, friend, scientist, disciplinarian, all at once—requiring a protean adaptability, exuding enthusiasm at all times.
An assortment of shibboleths can be used to describe our goals: “teaching children to care,” “initiating an ecological conscience,” “environmental awareness.” All these seem less apt when I’m out there getting kids to hold snakes and cross creeks.
At times my questions leave the kids not pleasant and that is probably how it should be. There aren’t easy answers and it’s disingenuous of me to pretend there are. And if I confuse more than I clarify, perhaps that is for the best, too. The nascent perplexities I introduce will at least give them the hang of it.
But if we don’t have any answers, then what the devil are we trying to do here, dwelling on all these nasty realities and bombarding their tender little minds with entropy and decay?
Well, then, there’s the bright side. There are baby lambs, for instance, and sweet-smelling mint and the cool shade next to running water. There’s climbing to a summit and holding hands together, stretched to the sky, in celebration. There’s discovering new wildflowers and naming them ourselves, and picking up a milk carton left by the trail, and laughter echoing in the canyons.
And if the occasional supercilious child begins to get on my nerves, there is one last resort: hike them to breathless silence. A few designated trails at HV are specifically known for their effectiveness at reducing dissent to panting.
We are eclectic in what knowledge we put in and don’t put in about science. I regularly present conundrums, such as “Who’s eating dirt for lunch?” Contentious and feckless children exist, but are surprisingly few and far between. And truculence is notoriously lacking from the guides’ presentations. Rather than inveighing against society’s current decisions, they encourage children to come up with their own.
“If I owned HV Ranch, I would leave it just the way it is in the Wilderness area. I like the cool sound of the stream flowing down, and going on hikes and seeing a whole bunch of birds, flowers, and leaves. I like the shade of the trees and the soft crunch of leaves under your feet, and the smell of all the leaves, trees, and flowers.” – Stephanie Sogawa.
Scat! If I’d begun by admitting this was coyote doo-doo, no one would have touched it. A euphemism was in order: used mouse. Let’s look for bones!” One of my sixth-grade girls did not quite believe me, but became absorbed after finding a jawbone and realizing I was handling it with gusto. After some time, I explain how the mouse came to be used. At this point, it was too late to drop it and go “Ugh!” I walk the trails on the lookout for—scat.
One never knows what will seize a group’s imagination. It might be scat, color cards, naming flowers or building an ant palace. It might be making and drinking trail tea, playing ranger or racing. I have to be absolutely dogmatic in my refusal to become dogmatic; I have to go with the flow. Some of the main points are: 1) fussiness over dirt and disconnectedness to their source of food and energy, shelter and clothes; 2) fear of animals, of wild beasts in the forests and the general alien quality of the woods that creates timidity; 3) genuine love of being outdoors and exerting themselves, a natural adventureness, and deep-felt appreciation.
Ramblings: It’s a progression. Teach parents in the home where people’s values are formed. Where do kids learn it? Gave up on parents teaching kids. I’m bringing up parents—not knowing how to teach values. Didn’t know much about nature. Teaching what it’s like to have a friendship with nature—to develop a relationship and develop love and respect—as with my Mom and friends—not the facts but feelings—feeling of camaraderie. Hug a tree and share a secret to become friends with a tree. How many people hug a tree outside of HV?
Disparateness of the farm and woods. What’s it like to be a cow? I feel like we’re not going to make it. Schism, two ways to create feelings: be a sheep—sense of oneness—mutual joy—friendship vs. utilitarianism. What do we use the animal for? “I’m looking forward to dying and being randomized.”… Decomposition is so key. Looking for some way to carry out our ideals. Looking through a window or opening a door. People of our generation needing a new American dream. We have great expectations—to live out those ideals—to start being the way people need to be if we’re going to get by. Communicate those ideals. It is idealistic but what option do we have? Living by one ideal is one of the most—also enjoy being near animals, period.
Sure, there are times when I wonder what forking out 3-feet deep sheep manure has to do with environmental education. Or chopping, clearing, and splitting downed bay trees. Or shoveling mud and digging trenches to combat slides. But what holds for the kids holds for us, the teachers, as well. Hands-on experience in what we are teaching is just as important as hands-on experience in learning. Without working on farms, we would be observers trying to teach farming. The same is even true for the wilderness. We can extol its virtues more lustily because we live so near it and love it so well.
I leave Hidden Villa feeling that I’ve not grown as an environmental educator as much as I have grown as a person. All aspects of my life have been deeply affected by my “internship”—I hesitate to call it something so artificial. Leaving was like leaving a home I had just found. Memories of particular incidents come back, when I try to think back on it—cutting the lamb’s umbilical cord, late nights at the office typewriter, moonlight walks to the dairy for milk, community folk dances, solitary hikes up the creek. But one incident I will not forget sums up my internship, I think: at dusk, as Ross drove the cows home, his rich baritone echoed in the canyon, “How can I keep from singing?” And I thought: how, indeed.
Living here gave us a chance to become caught up in living the values we try to teach. The value of quiet walks in the wilderness, which we could sneak away on. The warmth of befriending a calf; the excitement of discovering a baby banana slug. All those were ours as we tried to impart them. Also, we were able to look at the environments they were coming from—the city, suburbia—with certain objective distance and perspective.
Interns at HV have been described as the “meat” in a “sandwich,” with staff members one slice of bread and volunteers another. Interns pick up the slack when volunteers contract final exams, or overworked staff members simply cannot be in three places at once. We assist the hostel, garden, ranch, project and administration, as well as act as little self-guided missiles on our own projects. It’s a lot to juggle, and the weekly scheduling meetings were often hilarious as we booked our lives a month in advance
All that scrubbing of toilets and digging of postholes, besides being necessary and tangible work, did do a lot. It promoted the attitude of self-reliance and do-it-yourself that some of what we were trying to convey involved. We became convinced, rightly or wrongly, that we could do about anything.
All of it wouldn’t have been possible without the incredibly strong support and appreciation of the staff, who believe that the guides and interns must be treated with the same care and solicitude as the children. An hour before the children arrive, guides share “values” and visit and prepare themselves for the day in a group psych-up. After the children go home, a “debriefing” session, with edible treats, gives each guide a chance to report and share the day’s experiences to a sympathetic audience, and tips for next time are passed around. Advice, as usual, is cheap. Potlucks and other social gatherings impress on the volunteers that they are not being used, but given the privilege to come here.
One of the secrets of Hidden Villa’s success is the blend of generations involved in the ranch. Ninety-six-year-old Frank is the overall patriarch. Toddlers are regular admirers of the animals. Children, teenagers, college students, young staff, and ranch hands—middle-aged and on up—the diversity of ages is one of the refreshing qualities of this place. Age stereotypes vanish when 10-year-old Sachia teaches riding lessons. Seventy-year-old Dan builds sheds, and everyone does everything without regard for age. The family feeling, the tolerance for treating people as individual members of a family, has always been a strong point.
When the chips were down and phone calls were needed, a mailing had to go out, we were there. Yet we were rewarded with kudos from the staff, enrichment sessions with visiting speakers on jobs, resumes, grants, how to set up a nonprofit group, and so on. We were told directly and indirectly that we were being trained to be leaders to go out and set up our own programs, and we were valued not only as friends but as future leaders in the field. The staff believed in us through and through. While it could have been easy to regard us as low persons on the totem pole that was gracefully sidestepped.
Of course, there are a few pitfalls, too. At times the mix of work and home was too much and we needed to get away. After a while, it was easy to believe that the world revolved around HV. Common to many live-in situations is the burn-out syndrome, the over-extension and doing too much just because one is physically there all the time. But the staff was always sensitive to this, quick to work out any difficulties, and supportive of the need to take time off and away
The deal is mutually beneficial: HV gets inexpensive, enthusiastic help, and we get training, experience, contacts and extraordinary fringe benefits. The pay was not scintillating: $10 a week plus room, in small huts or trailers, and milk, butter and vegetables. But we were able to survive.
The diversity of learning experiences—garden, husbandry, riding, cheese and yogurt making, bread making, mopping floors—together created a unique whole growing, not in easily described ways.
I leave personally enriched, confident of my teaching abilities, and convinced that I’ve discovered some hand and foot tenants of my lifestyle. Additionally, I’ll never be hesitant of shoveling manure or turning compost again.
Stories to tell: the day two extra classes showed up; cows got out, trees fell, the goat butted children.
At HV, the sense that home is a place to make things happen; a combination of work and home lives embodied in the owners—the Duveneck family.
“Let me do it and I’ll understand.”
Though the sky was nearly blue, the damp night air of winter had yet to be chased out of the canyon. Frost was brittle beneath the cow’s hooves. Nothing on the ranch moved except for the many birds singing from the hillsides. I knocked on the ranch staff’s door promptly at 7 a.m., with the boldness of one reporting to the first day of work. A sleepy young man in long johns at length appeared, rubbing his eyes. “I’m here for chores,” I said firmly, though embarrassed. “I’ll get Ross,” he murmured and vanished. I heard the creaks of a body turning over in bed for the first time in several hours. The long-johned ranch hand reappeared. “He’ll be out in 10 minutes.”
So I waited by admiring the flower gardens in front of the old ranch house, originally a stagecoach stop and inn in the 1860s, with its components rumored to have been shipped ‘round the Horn. I looked up to see an overalled young man impassively putting hay in the back of the truck. “Sorry,” I said, walking over. “I thought you said 7 a.m.” “7’s when I get up for chores,” said Ross. No hard feelings.
We hayed horses, sheep, pigs, and grained chicken in a pleasantly conversationless way. Then it was time for the cows. I scrubbed up without comment as Ross did, imitating his every move. “Want to milk?” he finally said. “Yes.” “Ever done it before?” At last, my moment of glory. “Yes, my grandfather taught me how.” I demonstrated the smooth rippling motion of the hands, so different from the pulling jerk the initiated believe in. He gave me Vicki. I was slow, reasonably inefficient, but adequate. Sore hands and back wouldn’t dissuade me from finishing. The silence of the ranch hands was tacit approval. We went to breakfast a united group.
When the staff asked us, at the end of our time, if it would be possible to have as rewarding an internship without living at the ranch, we were emphatic that it was not. Living here allowed me to feel part of the community, to participate in all aspects of running the ranch, including manure piles, loose calves, mudslides, and so forth. It meant our work lives and personal lives were united; our friends were also our co-workers. The community spirit engendered by spontaneous get-togethers after a full day of clearing downed trees was an irreplaceable part of the experience. We could teach the children about Hidden Villa as our home—not someplace segregated from the rest of our lives. Teaching children about farm life was best done from the point of view of the farmer; about gardens, as gardeners; about the wilderness, as hikers who frequented these trails on our own free time. Our workplace was also our home. There was no fragmentation in teaching something that was not near and dear to us. We put sweat and muscle into caring for and maintain the land and facilities that deepened our understanding of what we were trying to teach. Take care of the land? That’s what we were doing. The resultant variety of experience kept us from getting stale, as well: we taught children, did administration, dug gardens, plumbing, cement work, roofing, animals and our own projects. An internship that tries this “whole” approach to learning produces whole growth, not just in educational skills, but personal development as well.
Hidden Villa is ready for more. An analysis of the farm’s educational effectiveness is underway; the hostel is expanding its Sunday afternoon and “hand-in-hand” programs; the environmental project is investigating ways to bring more handicapped, deaf, blind, and other special groups of children to Hidden Villa.
It is partly the unquestioned presence of strangers who visit or pass through without fanfare or fees: joggers who run up the canyon, neighbors bareback on Shetland ponies, families with toddlers who somehow know, by the communal grapevine, that new lambs and calves are here. Perhaps, at times, there is some mild exploitation; but in all, the generous and unspoken offer is as generously and tacitly reciprocated. There is no litter on the HV trails, and not because crews of uniformed rangers patrol the paths with pointed sticks. Humans have a tendency to take far better care of what they feel they own; what they have a stake in, or what they feel they depend upon. Because they realize that no crew of governmental agency officials is there to absorb and take care of any abuses of the land and its privileges, the visitors practice self-patrolling and clean up after themselves. They realize that they, and other people like themselves, are responsible for maintaining HV’s beauty. Everyone who comes here is exposed to the caretakership ethic as exemplified by Frank and Josephine and spread by their children, friends, and staff. A sixth-grade boy from San Jose immediately pounced on an empty orange juice carton he recognized as coming from another member of his class and put it in his pack. He was particularly responsive because a classmate, a fellow representative of his school, had committed the deed. He understood that here, he had to personally assume responsibility to correct the misdeeds of others. How many cases is it clearly demonstrated that people are capable of controlling their messiness and showing consideration for other people and living things if 1) no “official” group exists to clean up after them (park rangers, busboys, janitors, hotel maids); 2) they realize the consequences and distraction from quality that their actions create; and 3) they feel some stake, some measure of personal responsibility and duty, to maintain the equalities they deserve and enjoy. The all-important, “If I don’t, who will?”
Part of the appeal is paradoxical, for the offer, while genuine, is also discreetly understated, and perhaps suffers from some elitism because of it. No big sign announces HV presence; no map indicates its existence; no large public signboard of welcome flags the entrance or parking, letting visitors know what they can do and where they can go. There is not even a public trails’ map posted. To even be motivated to come inside the gate, one must either be part of a program or part of an inner circle of in-the-know friends. Is this a shame? Perhaps, yet HV is so fragilely located so near to so many people. Could it absorb many more visitors than it already has, without damaging its qualities? With Foothill Park and the Monte Bello, San Antonio and Los Transios preserves all so near, it can be argued that what makes HV valuable is not the use of land for plain recreation, hiking, picnicking, etc., but its programming; and that the programming might suffer if too big a campaign to “open up” HV to the public was launched. We want to get the less-privileged out to the woods and enjoying and experiencing nature. But rather than bringing them all to HV to do that, HV’s role is to teach and initially expose children and many others to such joys; to serve as a birthing pen for pleasure taken and appreciation felt for the outdoors. And then, HV probably does not want hundreds of outside visitors a day; instead, fewer come but the experience is guided and deep, and may leapfrog: the children and parents can then explore and experience other places—thanks to what they have learned here.
Gale Warner
Unpublished, 1983